


Page of Cups

by KiwiMeringue



Series: Undying Fidelity [3]
Category: Thor (Movies)
Genre: Based on Lorelei from AOS episode "Yes Men", F/M, Hints of Lorelei's creepy ass powers, Logyn - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-30
Updated: 2021-02-20
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:34:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,934
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26202727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KiwiMeringue/pseuds/KiwiMeringue
Summary: Undying Fidelity Chapter 9.5: The Lorelei Incident.
Relationships: Haldor/Sif (Marvel), Loki/Lorelei (Marvel), Loki/Sigyn (Marvel)
Series: Undying Fidelity [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1350748
Comments: 4
Kudos: 7





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello all! If you've come across this without having read Undying Fidelity, this fits between chapter 9 and the currently in-progress chapter 10 of my Logyn fic <3

1407 AD: Asgard, Valaskjálf

Thor calls for another round of drinks, clapping a broad hand on the other man’ shoulder. He had been surprised, but pleasantly so, when Haldor had suggested they talk. The Great Hall is all but empty in the early afternoon, and rather than the long benches they’d chosen to sit around a small table set up by the fire.

“We should have done this ages ago,” he tells him, beaming as a servant hurries back with two more tankards of mead. Thor had been acquainted with Haldor— of an age with him, from a minor noble house, but it was his recent accomplishments on the battlefield that had truly distinguished him (and, he suspects, caught Sif’s eye). He’d noticed them socializing after a few minor skirmishes, then stealing glances at feasts and celebrations, chatting together, and finally they’d been courting in earnest for a few short years. She brings him around often, but they’ve never spoken alone before today. “Anyone dear to Sif is a friend of mine.”

“Yes,” Haldor says, unusually stiffly as he accepts the drink, “Sif.” He’s always seemed a pleasant fellow, bold and daring on the field, but with a warm, welcome smile and good-natured sense of humor at rest. He seems distracted today, passing a hand through his short sandy-brown hair, his dark brown eyes distant.

“Is there some trouble, friend?” Thor quirks an eyebrow as he takes a swig, but Haldor shakes his head, assures him that nothing is amiss. Haldor perks up suddenly, with the attentive excitement of a dog that’s caught a scent, as the sound of quick footsteps and the tapping of dainty heels draws nearer.

“Well isn’t this a surprise,” Lorelei says as she reaches the table, smiling as she looks between them. “Might I join you?”

“Yes. Yes of course,” Haldor stands to let her in, wide-eyed, his tongue darting over his lips. There’s a breathless eagerness in his expression that immediately strikes Thor as wholly inappropriate for someone courting one of his dearest friends, and he’s about to tell him so, his own expression darkening as he opens his mouth to protest—

Lorelei’s hand grazes the back of his neck as she passes by, and the tension drains out of Thor’s shoulders. He’s being ridiculous. Haldor is an honourable man, and Sif trusts him— he’s clearly imagining things… though he could hardly fault him if he wasn’t. Lorelei is ** _stunning_**.

“Honestly, I’ve been meaning to speak with you for a long time,” she tells him with a bashful smile, looking up through lowered lashes, “but I’m never able before _someone_ so rudely chases me away… With threats of _violence_ , no less….” She shakes her head, aghast, and shrinks into herself with a delicate sigh. “I do understand, of course, I feel awful about what happened, but it was so long ago and I was so young… The attention was so nice, and I didn’t know what I was doing. By the time I realized, I had already ruined everything…” She looks up at him, her green eyes sparkling. “But you don’t hold it against me. Do you, your Highness?” 

Thor offers her an understanding smile and nod of his head. “Honestly, Lady Lorelei, I’m the last person who should criticize for youthful lapses in one’s power,” he chuckles. “I think I’ve shocked each of my friends at least once. Poor Loki _alone_ —” he trails off with a sheepish grimace, rolling his eyes and shaking his head at the memory. 

She smiles at him, letting out a deep breath of relief, a pale hand at her collarbone, the other reaching out to take one of his. It’s so small in his own, so soft, and she gives it a squeeze, looking deep into his eyes. “Oh, thank you,” she breathes, “I _knew_ you’d understand.”

The rest of the world melts away as they talk. She says she was in town picking up a few things she’d had commissioned, and she’d thought it most polite if she stopped in to visit. He’d never realized before how pleasant Lorelei was, and there’s an irritation growing at the back of his mind as he thinks of all the times Sif warned her away from them. This warm, charming, perfectly lovely ásynja excluded for all those years because of Sif’s overprotective— no, _jealousy_ , Lorelei rightfully names it. He’d never believed Sif capable of that kind of pettiness but perhaps he didn’t know her as well as he had thought, and Haldor— Norns, he had completely forgotten about Haldor— isn’t offering any words in her defence.

It’s alright, she assures him, her hand resting on his forearm— he doesn’t miss the way she admires the muscle corded beneath his skin and he might show off for her a little in return— they can make up for lost time now. A crooked grin stretches across his face. He feels a little tipsy— flushed and unsteady like he’s enjoyed a few too many drinks, and he’s suddenly certain that he’s never been this thoroughly besotted. Something…. There’s a buzzing at the back of his skull, something needling him about that thought, but it can’t quite come together.

Lorelei’s eyes widen suddenly as her gaze darts to the main entrance. Thor manages to tear his own attention away from those beautiful eyes long enough to follow their line of sight, and he finds Fandral paused in the doorway. He blinks, his eyes passing over the three of them before he turns abruptly on his heel and disappears down the hallway without another word.

Thor raises an eyebrow and moves to follow him, but the gentle pressure of Lorelei’s hand on his arm somehow holds him still. To his disappointment, she looks away from him.

“Haldor, dear,” Thor feels the barest shiver of jealousy at her divided attention, but he says nothing. “Do you remember what we had discussed?”

“Of course,” he says, rapt, and then contented when she smiles at him.

“Good. Just be ready, in case things become…. Unpleasant. Let’s hope he’s just giving us our privacy,” she says, turning back to Thor with a nearly nervous giggle, taking hold of his hand and threading her lithe little fingers through his own, “but really the thing I’d been meaning to ask you— I hope you don’t think it terribly forward, but I’d been hoping to invite you to my estate. You’ve never visited, have you? You’ll love it— I do realize it would be most unbecoming, a young Prince visiting my home unchaperoned, being fatherless and alone as I am, but… I would rather it just be the two of us, no big official party. I know the polite thing would be to extend the invitation to your brother, but...” she lets out another guilty sigh, looks up at him apologetically, hoping for understanding. “He makes me so very uncomfortable.”

He furrows his brows for a moment. He supposes Loki can have that effect, but he dislikes the thought of the two most important people in his life at odds. Thor gives her a reassuring pat on the shoulder and smiles at her. He can work on that, has all the time in the world to ease them into one another’s company, and surely Loki will warm up to her when he sees how dearly Thor loves her. “He’s actually away, at the moment.”

“Is he really?” her expression brightens. “Perhaps now would be the perfect time. Just for a few days, it really is beautiful this time of year. We should leave at once.” A sly smile curls across her lips as she leans in closer, playfully twisting a long lock of his golden hair around her finger. The look she gives him has heat pooling low in his belly as she stands, linking her arm through his and starting for the door. “It would be terribly scandalous if anyone found out, though. If you could just tell the guard you’re off hunting, or fishing, or whatever it is strapping young warriors like yourself do between battles…”

When they turn, the Lady Sif is standing in the doorway, sword drawn and eyes narrowed.

“Haldor, get back,” she orders, never taking her steely gaze from Lorelei. Haldor’s eyes flicker to Lorelei, and she dismisses him with a subtle nod of her head. He backs away but doesn’t leave, lingering by one of the servants’ corridors. “Let him go,” Sif demands, pointing the blade at the two of them.

Lorelei looks up at him, terror shining in those lovely eyes. “Sif, it’s _fine_ ,” he assures her, holding up a cautioning hand. “Sheath that at once; you’re being ridiculous.”

Sif ignores him, her fingers curling around the hilt of her blade in anticipation. “I said,” she repeats, directly at Lorelei, “let him **_go_**.” 

To his dismay, Lorelei slips her arm out from his, takes a step back, her hands raised in surrender. “Alright. See? We’re only talking.” 

“Sif,” he eases, taking a step forward, one hand still extended as he moves to lower the sword. “I know what you think, but Lorelei can’t help the nature of her magic any more than I can. Amora had the same gifts, and she was always welcome here. We’ve just been _talking_ , and honestly, I’m coming to see how we’ve all misjudged her for so long.” Sif hesitates and Thor smiles, reaching out again for Lorelei, who winds her way back into his arms. “She’s wonderful. I’ve never met anyone like her. Sif,” he sighs, a tender glance down at Lorelei and then back up at Sif, beseeching. “As my friend, I would hope you would be happy for me.”

The knot in his stomach unclenches as Sif lowers the weapon. It’s still in her hand, but dangling loosely from her thumb curled beneath the cross-guard as she holds her palms out, placating. “Alright,” she says, nodding, and Thor beams at her change in attitude. “Alright. Tell me, what is it you admire about her?”

Thor’s grin widens, dreamy and drunk on his affection. “So many things,” he tells her eagerly, impatient to convince Sif of her worth. “There’s…. She… ah,” His brow furrows as he tries to wrangle the warm, dizzying feeling into something concrete. His head begins to throb at the temples, behind his eyes, as though it might split open. “She’s… beautiful? And… and….and her voice…? I… what?”

“Damn you.” There’s a snarl from below him, and Lorelei seizes him by the arm so tightly that her nails pierce the skin. “You just had to make this **_unpleasant_** , didn’t you Sif?” At the end of the hall, Haldor vanishes down his corridor. “No matter. We’ll do this the hard way.”

There’s a numbness where her fingers dig into his forearm, a feeling sinking in through his skin like something’s tapped the lightning in his veins, slowed the current— _interference_ , Thor thinks, though the implication of this falls away—is _wrenched_ away from him, someone else’s magic tampering with his own.

He flinches, tries to rip his arm away as a reflexive defense against the intrusion, but blood begins to pool beneath her fingers and it drags him down deeper, deeper… the urge to fight draining out of him. It’s a soothing feeling, he comes to realize, like laying down to rest. It’s Lorelei’s magic, after all, his sweet, beautiful Lorelei, her essence pouring into him, and how could he not welcome it with open arms?

“Thor? Thor, look at me— _shit_ ,” he hears Sif as though she’s far away, as though he’s hearing her from underwater. 

Lorelei’s voice is clearer, the only thing that cuts through the haze.

“Thor, my love?” she asks, casually, and his heart leaps at the sound, at the opportunity to give her anything she wants from him. “Kill her for me, would you?”

Yes. Yes, of course. Yes, anything.

The storm is already gathering in his heart, and he channels it bright and sharp and arcing, into his hand. Sif throws herself out of the way of the first bolt, just barely evades a second as the bench he hits in her place explodes in a shower of charred splinters. She backs away from him as he lunges towards her, but doesn’t flee, instead keeping a steady distance, sword raised. He hears her talking, though he can’t make sense of the words.

**_Fight_ ** _her, Thor. You do not want this._

He sees only the target of Lorelei’s ire. Lightning gathers in one hand, and he holds out the other, and calls.

_No!_

Sif strikes at his arm with the flat of her blade, disrupts his concentration, but he sends her flying with a blast of crackling energy and then— he blinks slowly as the hammer falls into his hand, at home, singing in resonance with his magic. Mjolnir is solid, grounding, its familiar, comfortable weight in his grip like a reminder—

Sif. Oh Norns, something… something struck Sif, sent her to the ground— relief floods through him as she scrambles back to her feet, but everything’s still spinning, his head pounds— Lorelei’s fingers curl around his shoulder, her voice in his ear, and the fog in his skull grows thicker. 

“End her, my love. We need to leave _now_.”

The hammer feels heavier in his hands.

He freezes as someone calls his name. Not Sif this time, and not Lorelei, but he hears it so clearly— “Mum?” he mumbles, looking towards the source, trying to blink his eyes back into focus, and he sees her now, in the doorway, a hand outstretched. His mother. It’s his mother calling to him, and he feels the gentle caress of her magic reaching for his, familiar and comforting, calming the static that rushes through him. Not enough to clear his head, but enough that he knows something is wrong, and feels the intrusion alongside her welcome presence. 

Thor lets Mjolnir slip from his fingers to fall with a heavy thud, and Lorelei screams in frustration. She yanks the sword from his belt and runs for an empty doorway, but Sif is upon her in an instant and he hears a ringing clang of metal on metal as his mother creeps towards him.

“Mum?” he feels lost, as if he’s being torn in two. He needs to **_do_** something. He desperately needs to go help, but he can’t remember who.

She smiles when she reaches him, hushes him as she trails a hand down the side of his face, and whispering reassurances, bids him focus on her— and he’s suddenly so very, very weary…

His eyelids droop irresistibly, lulled by his mother’s magic, and he sinks with her to the stone floor, cradled in her arms as he’d been as a boy. He’s meant to be doing _something_ … Thor drifts, bobbing to the surface and then sinking back to the deep, calm quiet, static crackling idly about him. He hears sounds— the familiar ringing of metal on metal, voices, familiar but unintelligible.

Someone calls out, uncertain, then again, frantic. There are more noises then, closer than the clatter of weapons, a sequence of events that some deep, smothered part of him understands in muted horror: a muffled cry, the dull thud of a body thrown to the ground, and then that gentle darkness swallows him whole.   
  



	2. Chapter 2

Passing through the Bifrost still leaves Sinir a touch skittish, but Loki had chosen the chestnut gelding for his even temper, and he doesn’t disappoint. The first steps upon solid ground, away from the swirling lights behind them, are hurried an uneasy but Sinir calms as he strides into the observatory.

Heimdall is ready at his post, his expression somber as he twists Hofund and seals the Bifrost closed. “Your Highness,” he says, acknowledging the prince with a polite dip of his head, though his piercing gaze never wavers, taking in the satchel slung over his shoulder. “You’re needed in the infirmary.”

Loki thanks him quickly as he nudges Sinir forward, careful through the doors and then into a canter down the Rainbow Bridge. Something in Heimdall’s tone leaves him uneasy.

His father was fine, the Odinsleep progressing as expected. His mother had assured him of that at once. _It’s Lorelei—_ was all she’d managed to say before he’d blurted out a frantic inquiry after Thor’s wellbeing. _Fine, now,_ she’d told him— now. Her choice of words had not escaped his notice, nor had his immediate conclusion escaped her own. All else she’d had time to convey was that she needed him to return with things she had already bid an elven servant retrieve— an eclectic assortment of Alfheim’s general curatives, he’d found when he’d examined the bag’s contents, many of which interact dangerously and couldn’t possibly be used together. The picture it paints is murky and alarming. 

_Please_ , she had said, the anxious note in his mother’s practiced calm wringing knots in his stomach, _come quickly._

He urges Sinir into a gallop.

The sky is dark overhead as he hurtles down the Rainbow Bridge and then through the city streets, the clouds thickest, their deepest, most furious grey, just beyond Valaskjálf. Thor is in a dark mood. 

A guard is waiting to take Sinir the moment he comes to a halt, and he gives the gelding an appreciative pat along his withers before dismounting and hastening towards the palace infirmary. The hallways are deserted save the Einherjar at their posts and along their patrol routes, more abundant than usual in the wake of whatever transpired— not that they would be any help if Lorelei were to return, but their presence sets the court at ease.

The healing rooms are, as always, dark and quiet, save the distant, muffled bustle of healers at work in some adjoining chamber. Disease is nigh unheard of in young, otherwise healthy Aesir, and anything less than a grave injury heals with little issue. Eir’s infirmary cares primarily for wounded warriors, the elderly, young children and ásynjur expecting them. The healers are few, and these chambers see little use in peaceful times. Today is an exception.

A young apprentice healer hurries into the hall, startled at the sight of him. “Your Highness!” she exclaims softly, then, “If I may?” and reaches out for the bag slung over his shoulder. He shrugs it off and she takes it hurriedly, flipping the satchel flap open to inspect the glass bottles clinking inside, her brows furrowed in thought. She thanks him and indicates towards the end of the hall with a distracted toss of her head before dashing back the way she came, shouting for Lady Eir. 

A grim curiosity drives him onwards, past the idling soul forge, towards the rows of patients’ beds, separated by thick curtains, all drawn back and empty save the last. The heavy footfalls he’d heard as he approached were Volstagg’s as he paces the width of the hall, muttering something to Fandral’s alarmingly patient ear, Hogun sat crosslegged, quiet and contemplative with his back to the wall. Fandral spots him first and stops Volstagg with a hand to his burly shoulder, and Loki doesn’t think they’ve ever looked quite so happy to see him.

 _Oh Norns,_ Loki thinks with a grim sigh, _what has she done to Sif?_

He’s half right.

When he nudges back the curtain he finds Sif turning to meet his gaze, and his eyes drift from her drawn expression down to the hand clutched in hers and the sickbed beside her—

Loki doesn’t bat an eyelash as the air leaves the room, driven from his lungs like a boot to the chest.

Sigyn is white as the bed linens and so eerily still that for a moment he fears he’s arrived too late— but then she shudders, a motion like a convulsion. She’s struggling to breathe, and only manages a pained, shallow lungful before she quiets again. Sif’s jaw tightens, as does her grip on her friend’s hand, fury in her red-rimmed eyes.

It’s not the first time her friends have all been gathered here while she was seen to, but this is no childish misadventure, no Lady Sigrun waiting alongside them to laugh, to ruffle his hair, to thank him for watching over Sigyn when she had needed him, for protecting her. He’s unprepared for the weight of it crashing over him, how easily it sweeps the centuries away in its wake and leaves nothing but the sight of his Sigyn fading.

( _One day, far, far from now, he’ll watch Thor see the same: all but helpless as his mortal grows weaker and the skiff speeds over black wasteland towards their fool’s errand— because even if they succeed, in a scant heartbeat he’ll be losing her again, to time in place of reality— and there will be no saving her then. His brother, his damnable fool of a brother, who loves too deeply to survive that kind of heartbreak._

 _Thor, at least, can hold her as she slips away_ ).

Fandral nudges his shoulder, pulls him aside to relay the day’s grim happenings: how Lorelei had bewitched Haldor, and recruited him to trap Thor, so she might then worm her way into his mind. How she’d overpowered him completely when subtlety had failed, set him on Sif until his mother had intervened— and then her contingency plan: how Haldor had lured Sigyn into the fray and thrown her at Sif’s feet. With Sif and his mother out of her way, the warriors three and the Einherjar had been powerless to stop her escape, and she’d vanished, Haldor still in her thrall.

Loki nods, doing his best to appear attentive as he processes Fandral’s account, but his mind is racing. “We’re just lucky it didn’t kill her outright,” Fandral says.

“Not luck,” Loki replies numbly, “this was by design. She’s a far better distraction dying than dead.” The look Sif shoots him is murderous, but it’s why she’s here now, and not already out hunting Lorelei. “What more? A flesh wound wouldn’t cause this.” There’s a pull, an impulse to move closer to her bedside that he tells himself is entirely practical, but he can tell already that it isn’t magic. Curses are brash and messy, and he would feel it from here. “She’s been poisoned.”

Fandral grimaces, and with a nervous glance between his compatriots, he sighs. “That’s just it. It’s… strange. Even Lady Eir can’t pin it down, and Amora would have had all manner of fell materials— here,” Loki’s stomach lurches— the arbitrary, aimless assortment of remedies— as Fandral steps away to recover something on a side table, and returns with a folded drying cloth. “We were hoping perhaps you could make sense of this.”

Did Lorelei know how perfect her ploy had been? Had it been her plan to strike at the hearts of both threats to her escape in one fell swoop, or had he been a chance casualty of a gambit meant for Sif? He’s no longer wondering when Fandral unfolds the soft white cloth for his inspection and eases it into his hands.

The knife, handled with care to preserve any evidence from which they somehow expect his magic to coax answers, is still bloody, the first few inches of the blade and the material swathing it streaked in oxidizing red.

“I believe,” Loki swallows thickly, his mouth gone dry, but he hides the stumble well, “you alluded to some oddity?”

“Sif, show him.”

Reluctantly, jaw set and eyes still blazing, Sif lets go of Sigyn’s hand. It stays in place, like— _a corpse in rigor_ , his brain supplies unhelpfully— like a _mannequin_ , he thinks instead, frozen—

No, he realizes as something clicks into place and the ground beneath him threatens to give way, not frozen but _petrified_. 

Fandral’s still talking, though Loki barely hears him. A few substances with these properties, but all so rare the healers have no tests between them, and all treated differently. If it progresses as it has—" Fandral doesn’t finish the thought, but another strained gasp answers for him.

If Loki is right, nothing in that bag is going to help.

“I see,” he says, trying to affect the appropriate level of concern. “Do excuse me a moment; I’ve some materials to consult.” With that, he spins on his heel and starts back down the empty hallway, willing his pace even and purposeful as it threatens to match the frantic pounding of his heart.

The enchantments on his rooms have been breached, the ones that would have alerted him had he been here, and he knows already, as he crosses the room to his bookshelves, and the scuffmarks beneath, that someone’s been at them. A sharp shove sends the bookcase skidding, and he drops to his knees, prying up the loose floorboard with his fingers and wrenching it free.

These are not the most powerful things he’s amassed, kept for interest and curiosity’s sakes more than utility’s, hidden and warded well enough for what they are. A would-be thief would have to know where to look, and she did.

He knows even before he sees it that the dust will be disturbed on the dark glass bottle he snatches from the trove, knows even before he has it in his hand that it will be too light. 

It’s of middling value as a spell component, but as a _poison_ … 

It’s been hastily recorked, and he raises the bottle to the light, turns it this way and that, a fragile hope caught in his held breath that she may have been stupid enough to— nothing. He opens it to be sure, upends it over an empty vessel just in case, but not a drop remains.

He had never imagined she might be this brazen. The glass cracks in his white-knuckled grip as he studies it, hands shaking with rage and humiliation, and as much as he wants to direct it at Lorelei, he’s the fool who had trusted her, shown her, sometimes unwittingly, the things she’s now turned against him: his magic, his weakness, his _heart_ — 

The bottle explodes in a shower of dark green glass as he hurls it carelessly across the room to shatter against the far wall, chest heaving. He freezes as a sound catches his attention— a sigh, a soft murmur of his name, and he whirls around in a panic to find the spectral form of his mother watching him from the doorway. He takes a steading breath, straightens, and forces a smile as he swallows down the squall inside him, and feigns normalcy.   
  
“Did you think I wouldn’t hurry if I’d known?” His mother is still wringing her hands, her expression drawn. She wouldn’t be holding court after the day’s upheaval, so she must be at his father’s bedside. Evidently, the Allfather hasn’t seen anything that merited abandoning the Odinsleep before the full nine days. He supposes, looking down from Hliðskjálf, a soldier and a handmaiden must seem a tolerable loss. “Basilisk venom,” he continues, voice hoarse, before she can reply. He wants nothing more than to pretend the past few moments hadn’t happened, and thankfully she seems willing enough to indulge him. “After… cross referencing a few historical accounts, I’m quite certain.” 

She lets out another long breath, her eyes shut as she registers the grim prognosis. “I will inform Lady Eir. Now knowing, there are surely measures we can take to make her more comfortable… slow the process…” The look she gives him is searching, meaningful, and he nods resolutely. He knows where he must go, and quickly.

“Lorelei will pay dearly for this. Mother, I _swear_ to you,” he pauses as he passes her in the doorway, hands tensing into fists at his sides, nails biting crescents into his palms, “she **_will_** be made to answer for what she’s done to Thor.” A bit of the rage eases out of his posture, his brows knit. “How is he?” Her expression is answer enough. “I’ll… I’ll check on him.” 

She offers a grateful nod, the sympathetic expression not quite a smile. “I’ll reach out to Vanaheim. Perhaps…”

His mind is already racing as he traces his contacts throughout the Nine— the kind of practitioners who would have such a thing are also the kind most adept at hiding themselves. It would take months to track them all down. Loki forces a smile. “Certainly worth a try,” he replies as he sets off down the hall. 

His brother is easy enough to find, just outside the palace grounds. He follows the trail of storm clouds and then, as he approaches, the sound of splintering of wood and the crackling of Thor’s magic. 

The wooden training dummies set up along a clearing are in smoldering ruin, and he’s turned his attention to a pair of long-dead trees, now felled, black and still glowing with embers where the deepest branching scars of lightning strikes mark them. With a familiar metallic clang, Mjolnir rends the dry wood beyond its endurance, and the stump remaining becomes a cloud of splinters.   
  
Thor roars in frustration as he steps back from the spray, a hand over his eyes, and a gust of wind sends the offending sawdust to the ground. He pauses, shoulders heaving, before calling the hammer back to his grasp.

“Alfdis says hello.”

Thor stops at the sound of his voice and turns. His bearing is thundercloud dark, but he tries to subdue it, and forces a smile that comes out as a grimace as he greets his younger brother. His expression crumbles under Loki’s scrutiny, and he drops the cheery façade, letting out a sharp breath, his jaw tight. “You’ve heard, I imagine.” Thor says, not able to meet his eye.

“A general picture, yes.” Perhaps unwisely, Loki approaches. _Humiliation,_ he assesses, trying to piece together the particular shade of his brother’s fury, the more fragile feelings armored in it. _Guilt._

Loki takes a seat on the trunk of one of the felled trees, leans his elbows on his knees, and motions to the empty space beside him. Thor considers it a moment, brows furrowed, restless sparks crackling between his fingers, then drops down with such force that it creaks beneath him. “None of this was your—”

“I should have known.” A muscle works in his brother’s jaw, and beneath his hand, the blackened wood splinters. “Should have noticed Haldor was acting strangely…” he breaks off, scowling through a few quick, noisy breaths. The air around him crackles static. “But it was like everything she said made perfect _sense_ , and I just succumb to it, like an absolute fool. She spoke, and I was so **sure**. I **_trusted_** her—”

“That’s what she does, what her magic is. You don’t recognize it as it’s happening.” Thor, at least, has that excuse to comfort him. A knot tightens in Loki’s stomach. He withers inwards as Thor surges out, as if to make space for him, cold and still and certain in contrast to the overpowering, directionless tempest that is his brother.

Thor shakes his head, scrubs his hands over his reddened face and rests against his knees, “Norns, I could have killed Sif—”

“—you didn’t.”

“What if I had— Loki, what if I’d _hurt_ our—?” He can’t bring himself to form the words, though Loki can read the start of it. _Mother_ , he doesn’t say.

Loki smiles, the appeasing kind he finds works best to ease Thor’s temper. “You didn’t, and I’d wager you couldn’t.” Though, it had taken Frigga’s full attention to subdue him.

“She took Haldor.”

“We’ll get him back.”

His brother is quiet for a moment, deep in thought, and in the forest behind them, birdsong fills the silence as the local denizens alarmed by Thor’s rampage resume their business. He can’t leave Thor like this, but he can’t stay, either. Each second that ticks by, each grain of sand through the hourglass, may well be the last she can afford. “Thor, this isn’t your fault.”

“You’re right,” Thor conceded, looking up from his hands, and sounding more as if he means to convince himself. His voice grows resolute, his earlier wild fury focused. “We **_know_** where the blame lies.” Loki certainly does. He laces his fingers together, squeezes tighter, and tighter, until his knuckles threaten to shatter. Thor chuckles humourlessly, clenches his jaw again. “And I can’t do a **_damned thing_** about it. Was…” the rage softens for an instant, revealing the concern it belies. “Any word on Sige?”

 _Declining rapidly._ “No change,” he says instead.

Thor nods, a few quick, distracted bobs of his head. “Any news on what it was?” He turns to Loki, eyes brighter when he tells him, the first hints of a smile easing the tension in his face, but his brow furrows when Loki doesn’t reply. “Is this not welcome news? If it’s a venom, an antidote can be devised from more of the same.” His expression falls again when Loki still has no answer for him but a nervous hush. “Is there none?”

Loki shakes his head and offers a weak smile, the knot in his stomach pulling tighter. “Not in our possession, nor in Alfheim’s, or Disa would surely have sent some with me.”

Thor sits up, his voice and posture list with a familiar enthusiasm. “Then we’ll find one, and slay it!” he announces, and it’s just a bit too bold, too certain. His tone borders on frantic. There hasn’t been a sighting in centuries, and he knows it. No one’s slain a basilisk since—

….Since Lady Sigrun, who had made arrowheads from the beast’s harmless teeth and entrusted the deadly fangs to the throne, where the venom had found its way from the vaults, to him, to Lorelei, and now through her daughter’s veins. 

“We’ll call that plan B,” Loki replies. “I’m headed to Amora’s old estate. If I’m going to find any soon, it will be there.” 

“ _If_ ,” Thor echoes, his eyes darting uneasily. “Should there be none…” 

It’s the only chance she has, the only way it might reach her in time. The stroke of good fortune it would take, for Amora to have had some, unused and well-stored, in her possession, for Lorelei to have not thought to dispose of it… and when has he ever been lucky? He doesn’t dare hold out hope, but can’t bring himself to douse Thor’s. He means them to be sweet, but the lies are like ash on his tongue. “It may simply run its course,” he says. _It won’t._

“Really?” His brother looks so relieved Loki can hardly bear it, and can’t help but assure him further, a sinking feeling taking hold. He’s only making this worse, getting Thor’s expectations up to be dashed when the inevitable happens, but he can’t bring himself to stop.

“She’s young, and strong, and stubborn. Lady Eir was optimistic.” _She’s dying._ “Now,” he says, clapping a reassuring hand to his brother’s shoulder as he pushes himself to standing, “I must make haste, lest Lorelei’s trail grow cold.” _It may already be too late._

“I’m coming with you.”

He turns to find his brother has gotten to his feet, his expression a familiar kind of stubborn, but Loki tries to reason with him anyway. “One travels fastest,” he replies, “and Lorelei’s magic didn’t affect me.”

“You were but a boy then,” Thor counters as he clears the distance between them in a few purposeful strides, “it may be different as a man grown, and she’s no doubt more powerful than she was.”

It isn’t, but Loki can’t admit that without also having to explain how he can be certain. With a restrained sigh and a ripple of green light, Loki shifts, an extra little flex of her seidr coaxing her clothing to accommodate the change of shape, so that they sit as well tailored to this body as they had to the other.

“Be it as my brother or sister, I will not see you pursue her alone.”

She’s about to argue, to relay the honest truth that in the unlikely event that Lorelei has fled home, the most dangerous thing to Loki would then be Thor— but she stops. The look in his eyes beneath the doggedness is desperation. Only action will assuage his guilt. “Alright,” Loki concedes, waving her brother along as she starts towards the stables at the quickest pace that won’t cause alarm, and a moment later finds them racing from the city at the quickest pace they can ask of the horses.

Amora’s old estate is easy enough to find, though the sun has begun to dip below the mountains by the time it comes into view. A glance down shows four sets of recent hoofmarks in the path— their own, and another towards, but not away. She mutters a curse under her breath as they come to a halt, Sinir always keeping a careful distance from the tempestuous white charger. Thor scowls but doesn’t protest when she insists on going first, swinging herself out of her saddle to begin a careful sweep of the perimeter, dagger in hand.

She finds the stable doors thrown open and when Loki stops, creeping inside, blade readied, at the sounds of movement from within, but all she finds is a delicate blood bay mare, still saddled, who raises her head at the Loki’s approach, regarding her for a moment with huge dark eyes before setting back to nosing at the hay set out in the only stall that seems to be in use. Behind the stable is a similarly aimless red-roan war horse, also still tacked and agitated.

So, only one horse living on the estate, and here’s Haldor’s, both abandoned. Lorelei is either here, or she’s fled on foot.

She resumes her circle of the property, finding nothing else of note until something catches her eye high above. The faint glow of a light sprigs to life through the curtains of a window on the second floor. Loki considers regrouping, but if Lorelei is inside, the last thing she needs is Thor charging in.

She presses on alone.

The nearest door opens without issue, and she creeps into what seems to be the estate’s kitchens. The fire is out, the once lavish space now clean, but otherwise sparse, shelves empty and cupboards holding enough for a few occupants, the days of Amora’s extravagant feasts long passed.

There’s sound above, movement consistent with the candlelight, and Loki creeps through the kitchen door into the manse proper, in a similar state of disuse. Alert for traps and ambush she continues up the grand staircase, a dagger ready in one hand and the throwing knives magicked just a thought away at the ready.

The noises— soft footfalls and a voice, muttering low— draw her along the hallway towards a heavy oak door. It’s ajar, when she goes to inspect, and she feels no wardings push back against an inquisitive sweep of her magic. The old metal hinges look likely to complain, so she uses a flicker of Seidr to ease the door open silently, and then closed behind her.

There’s someone inside, but it isn’t Lorelei. The room has been tossed, clothes and jewelry strewn about like a hurricane had passed through, and the petite young woman working frantically to straighten it all is whispering nervously to herself as she works. _It’s fine, it’s fine,_ she repeats in quavering Vanir. 

Loki isn’t willing to drop her guard just yet, but she doesn’t sense a trap. The Vanir girl’s panic feels genuine, and she hisses a whisper to get her attention—just a subtle sound to catch her ear so she can warn her to be quiet, get whatever information she can without alerting anyone nearby.

Instead, the girl starts at the sound, letting out a bloodcurdling shriek that threatens to deafen in the small space, the gathered clothes tumbling from her hands. She whirls around with a swish of disheveled black hair, the eyes that fall upon Loki wide in abject terror.

Loki rushes forward, magic gathered between her fingers prepared to silence her, put her to sleep, _something_ — but the other girl scrambles back, still screaming, and it’s far too late. If Lorelei is nearby, she’ll no doubt have heard this. “Shh!” She says instead as she reaches the girl, who sobs between shuddering gasps for air. “Shh, it’s alright, I’m not going to hurt you.”

She quiets, though it may be from terror rather than calm, trembling as she hurries to draw in far too many breaths at once. “Shh. That’s it. Now, quickly, tell me what’s happened.”

Loki sees her swallow hard, and with one last shaky whimper she opens her mouth to answer— and all that pours forth is another wail as the door behind them explodes into a torrent of wooden splinters. Loki whirls to face the chaos, a dagger in hand, but she recognizes the hammer suspended in the air and the form flying through the spray of debris with a battle cry and a crackle of bristling thunder.

The metallic clang of Mjolnir returning to his hand nearly drowns out the soft thud as the screaming Vanir girl crumples to the carpeted floor in a dead faint.

“Well,” Loki says dryly as Thor stops to blink at the scene in front of him, not finding the expected danger. “That could have gone better.”

“Who is that?”

Loki nudges her with her boot. She stirs but doesn’t rouse. “I have absolutely no idea.”

Thor’s brows knit as he crosses the room. He kneels to gently scoop her into his arms then sets her gently atop the plush covers of Lorelei’s bed. The girl’s eyelashes flutter, and she startles at the sight of someone looming over her. “Easy, friend,” Thor sooths, a massive, placating hand outstretched. “We mean you no harm. You’re safe.” The Vanir girl blinks him into better vision as she wakes properly, and slowly rises on her elbows to a sit. Her dark eyes are huge and shining, and staring up at Thor Loki swears her cheeks flush a shade darker. “We’re in search of Lorelei. Can you tell us what’s happened here?” She shrinks a bit at the name, but nods.

Her name, she tells them, is Röskva. She and her brother Thjálfi, orphans, had been brought from Vanaheim by Lorelei to serve her and take care of the estate. She had learned quickly to fear her mistress’ temper, and had been living in terror for a century now, trapped by her situation and by the state of her spell-ensnared brother. Today, she had arrived home in a fury unlike any Röskva had seen, and torn through the estate grabbing supplies and snapping commands before she was off just as quickly.

“Was there a man with her? This high, brown hair?” She nods at the description of Haldor.

“Yes,” she says with a shaky breath that belies brewing tears. “He left with her, in that kind of fog she puts over them. The Norns were kind— Thjálfi was off fishing when she arrived, or I fear she may have taken him too.”

Certain that she doesn’t know anything more useful, Loki asks after any place Lorelei might have used as a workshop. Röskva points her further up the same hallway, and she leaves her brother to the panicked housekeeper.

To call it a study is generous. No bottles, no phials, nothing she might have been after. It’s an ornate sitting room, but the books lining the shelves are common, and the trinkets sparkling between them look more impressive than they really are. Things to be shown off, not used—except for one.

Lying in wait on a table is a familiar journal, two tones of green ink sparkling in the glow of the room’s fireplace, fallen open to a page torn hastily from its binding.

Taking the evidence with her will do Lorelei no good— Loki has long since committed these maps to memory. _So that’s where you’ve run to._

The book sits silent, mocking, Loki’s hand in Loki’s colours across its pages.

She knows where Lorelei has gone; it doesn’t matter how.

The creak of a door sends a jolt down her spine and she turns, but the doorway is empty; she is unobserved. A moment later Loki finds Thor poking his head out into the hallway as well, both following the sound to the main level too the front entrance, where a man, who they know at once must be Thjálfi, has wandered inside, a bucket of river trout hanging limply by his side.

He moves, mechanically, towards the kitchen, his eyes unfocused, his jaw slack, completely oblivious to the two strangers watching him from the staircase. There’s a soft sound of recognition as Röskva ventures into the hallway, hastening down the steps past the other set of siblings towards her twin.

They follow, and she catches up to him as he’s about to set to work cleaning his catch, pausing when she lays a hand on his shoulder, something stirring dimly in his expression in response to her voice. “We have guests, Thjálfi,” she tells him softly, and she looks back at Thor with a grateful smile, eyes shining. “They’re going to help us.”

He blinks slowly, his eyes finally lifting and settling on the strangers. Without Lorelei here to command him, his own thoughts slog through the haze of her influence like mud.

Loki glances sidelong at her brother, a rage pooling in her stomach at the thought of the fate he had so narrowly escaped (that she had so brazenly **_offered_** and expected Loki to **_approve_** ).

Judging by the set of Thor’s expression, he’s contemplating the same. He shakes the thought away, and turns to her eagerly. “Did you find anything? Any of the— the thing we needed, the venom, was there—

“No,” Loki replies with a sigh, then, “What I did find was an atlas open to a canyon in the fae wildlands. The magic in the air is so thick there, it’s no wonder Heimdall hasn’t found her.”

Thor’s jaw tightens, and in frustration, brings his fist down against the kitchen table hard enough to see the legs buckle, fish flying, and the Vanir twins reflexively flinch away. “But how would she have **_gotten_** there?”

Loki swallows down the guilt rising at the back of her throat as she shakes her head, pretends some vague guess at a way Amora might have known, and wills her mind away from the book crumbling to ash in a hearth upstairs.

She thinks on that pathetic excuse for a mage’s study, the thought needling. There must be something more. Though not related to magic, the books upstairs had been a wide selection of familiar classics, and not anything Loki could imagine to be to Lorelei’s tastes. They had been Amora’s, but for pleasure not for study.

“Do you know where Amora did her work? Grimoires, potions, notes, there must be something left.”

“I….” Röskva hesitates, her expression a fearful anticipation of delivering bad news. “No, I don’t think so. We arrived after Lady Amora disappeared, and I’ve never seen anything like that, unless—” she pauses, turning back to look back the way she had come. “There is a sealed door we were never to ask after. I’m not sure what’s down there.”

She leads them to it, a door off the main sitting room that looks to lead to a cellar, closed with boards and nails rather than magic. Thor makes short work of the barricade, and a cloud of dust and stale air billows out from the stone steps leading down into pitch darkness.

The green cast of the witchlight in Loki’s hand lights the way as they descend, Amora’s workshop clearly abandoned to all but the spiders who’ve taken up every cranny and corner since she disappeared.

A wave of Loki’s hand lights the sconces circling the basement, and the scene comes into view. A heavy wooden table lies strewn with books and papers, pungent potions long since congealed down to sludge where they had been brewing, and slumped in a corner, nearly obscured by centuries of dust and cobwebs, the desiccated remains of a corpse.

Thor curses under his breath as he takes in the grisly scene, perpetuated by someone who had feasted beside his family as a guest of honour. “What is all this?” He asks, bewildered as Loki makes a beeline for the table.

“This… this is about as dark as it gets,” Loki says, flipping through the aged papers with a mix of revulsion and awe she tries to keep from her voice. “She tried about everything one’s not meant to meddle in. Some notes here on time, a brief flirtation with reanimation—I think that’s what our friend here was for, but most seems to be mind control—”

“Mind control? She could do that already,” Thor replies, nudging the mummified body with his foot. Mercifully, there’s no response.

“On males of biologically susceptible species, yes, but this—” her brow furrows as she looks over the notes, frantically scanning the tidy hand. It’s plain to Loki after centuries of study, but these would have been meaningless to Lorelei. “This would work on **_anyone_** … It’s the same problem every time, the one mages have been dealing with for as long as we’ve studied magic.” She’s vaguely aware of a thud from somewhere off in Thor’s direction, then another, but so engrossed in Amora’s notes she barely considers it. “What she has here is theoretically possible but the amount of energy it would take is just… astronomical. She was doing her best to get around it, these are— Norns, it’s horrible, but it’s **_brilliant_** …. Thankfully I’m not seeing any signs she had succeed. Few beings, Amora included, possess that kind of raw power, and to channel it without destroying yourself... It would take something like the—” 

Loki is snapped out of her enthrallment when Thor calls her name (from his tone, it’s been more than once), and she looks up to find he’s disappeared. She follows his voice to a passage hidden in a back corner, and finds him studying a door, sigils carved along its frame and scratched into the wood of its surface. “It won’t open. Is this anything?”

“Yes…” she breathes, in disbelief as she takes in the intact runes of the warding spell, eyes wide. Lorelei was never interested in the finer points of spellcraft. It wouldn’t take much to keep her out, and that means whatever was kept in here had been safe from her. Maybe…

With barely a thought, there’s a dagger in her hand as she digs into the wood of the door, scratching out and digging in her own lines until she feels the old hum of the embedded magic sputter and die. The door swings open as if in defeat, and there, undisturbed, are rows and rows of bottles and jars.

Loki steadies herself as she rushes to search them, careful not to let a foolish hope take hold but— there. She snatches a tiny, promising bottle and swipes the thick layer of dust away. Behind the dark glass is the right viscosity, the right kind of sheen— she uncorks it, ignoring Thor’s startled cry of protest as she presses the tiniest drop to her tongue—safe, so long as it doesn’t find its way into her bloodstream— and a shudder passes instantly through her frame at the unbearably acrid taste.

“Thor, here,” she exclaims as she presses the cork back tightly, a shimmer of protective green magic cocooning it’s fragile form. “Take it, go now!” She insists when he doesn’t share her urgency, blinking in surprise at her for a moment, but her fervor shocks him into compliance. He takes it, still bewildered by his sister’s sudden panic as she shoos him up the stairs. “As Fast as you can, go, **_go_**! I’ll finish up here. And Thor be **_careful_** with that, or so help me—”

With a baffled grin and his word, Thor rushes off, and a moment later Loki hears the telltale whir of Mjolnir through the air as her brother soars towards the city. She’s left on a dusty stairway, light pouring in from the open doorway above partially obscured by the two nervous Vanir cautiously peeking around the doorframe. 

They scurry off, Röskva leading her brother (still moving slowly, dazed) by the hand, when Loki bids them gather up anything they want to take with them and then ready the two horses loose in the stable. According to Röskva, there are no other animals living here to worry about.

Floorboards creaking above, she can hear them moving as she paces the workshop. This work is too dangerous to let exist… though she does read what’s there in its entirety, and perhaps helps herself to a few choice specimens from Amora’s shelves.

Some of the things she leaves there are violently flammable.

The estate has just begun to shrink into the distance when Loki’s improvised wick finally burns down to the noxious pool of broken glass and spilled potions splashed across the cellar floor. The explosion sends a dull rumble through the ground that alarms the horses. Gullfaxi is already agitated from Thor’s absence and nearly rips his lead line from Loki’s hands, and Lorelei’s horse nearly throws Röskva.

The windows explode outwards in a billow of black smoke that Loki watches with no small amount of satisfaction. All the ride back to Asgard it follows them, dwindling to a thin wisp against the darkening sky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading and thank you for your patience! I'm still having a difficult time getting the words to come but I'm trying. I think this chapter sat 80% done for about a year and I'm afraid it went stale. 
> 
> God this is so self-indulgent and I care way too much about the horses.


End file.
